The present invention relates generally to optics, and more particularly, to Topology-Reconfigurable 5G Optical Mobile Fronthaul Architecture with Software-Defined Any-to-any Connectivity and Hierarchical QoS.
The proliferation of smart mobile devices and services has led to the advent of advanced wireless communications and networking features envisioned to be key aspects of next-generation 5G mobile systems, including massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques, device-to-device (D2D) communication, and heterogeneous/small-cell architectures. However, the data rate, synchronization, and latency demands these advanced features place on the mobile backhaul network are tremendous, often dramatically exceeding current performance specifications. Moreover, as mobile systems evolve to 5G, wherein as many as 10 mobile devices/connections per person operating in various wireless spectrum bands are envisioned to be interconnected into a centralized cloud-based “Internet of Things”, the requirements on the backhaul network will become even more stringent. Dynamic (run-time) network resource allocation to accommodate unpredictable traffic patterns, any-to-any device connectivity, and sophisticated hierarchical quality-of-service (QoS) that differentiates between devices/services in an intelligent and flexible way are expected to become just as important to the user experience as traditional performance metrics (e.g. data rate and latency guarantees.) The present invention thus seeks to solve this problem through a novel topology-reconfigurable 5G optical mobile fronthaul (MFH) architecture with software-defined any-to-any connectivity and hierarchical QoS support.
The following references are noted in the background discussion below:    [1] N. Cvijetic et al, Proc. OFC 2012, paper PDP5B.7.    [2] N. Cvijetic et al, Proc. OFC 2013, paper PDP5B.2.    [3] C. Liu et al, Proc. OFC 2013, paper OTh4A.4.    [4] P. Chanclou et al, “Optical Fiber Solution for Mobile Fronthaul to Achieve Cloud Radio Access Network,” Proc. 2013 Future Networks Summit (www.FutureNetworkSummit.eu/2013).    [5] D. Samardzija et al, IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 11, no. 9, September 2012.
In previous work, novel optical mobile backhaul (MBH) architectures [1-3] supporting higher data rates, higher cell densities, lower latency, and accurate synchronization have been proposed. However, the latency and synchronization performance of the previously proposed optical MBH approaches are not sufficient to support advanced 5G features, either because the required processing is implemented too far back in the network and away from the cell site, incurring transmission latencies, or because the network upgrades needed to move the required processing functionality closer to the cell are prohibitively complex and costly. To overcome these limitations, novel optical MFH architectures using the common public radio interface (CPRI) have also been proposed [4]. However, while CPRI-based optical MFH can satisfy latency and synchronization requirements, it imposes an orders-of-magnitude bandwidth overhead even for 3G/4G systems, which simply cannot be sustained for 5G. Bandwidth compression techniques for CPRI traffic have also been investigated [5], yet require additional processing overhead which increases latency. The proposed CPRI compression techniques moreover do not support statistical multiplexing, nor offer sufficiently large gains to offset increases expected from e.g. massive MIMO deployments. Furthermore, neither previous optical MBH nor previous optical MFH approaches [1-4] have considered topology re-configurability for D2D communication and hierarchical QoS. In terms of software-defined control, previous work on optical MBH [2] has considered software-defined wavelength virtualization and switching between different MBH transceiver modes (e.g. CPRI vs. OFDMA). However, software-defined control for topology re-configurability, D2D communication, and hierarchical QoS has neither been proposed nor demonstrated either for optical MBH or MFH networks.
Accordingly there is a need for topology-reconfigurable 5G optical mobile fronthaul configuration with software-defined any-to-any connectivity and hierarchical quality of service.